


The Dark Holes Are as Multitudinous as the Stars in the Galaxies

by spatialvoid



Category: Austin & Murry-O'Keefe Families - Madeleine L'Engle
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Post- A Ring of Endless Light, Seven Bay Island
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-19 17:26:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7370923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spatialvoid/pseuds/spatialvoid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rob finds Vicky beside Grandfather's grave. </p><p>Takes place post- A Ring of Endless Light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dark Holes Are as Multitudinous as the Stars in the Galaxies

**Author's Note:**

> _There's a hole in the world._   
>  _I'm afraid I may fall through._   
>  _Someone has died_   
>  _Was_   
>  _Has gone_   
>  _Is where?_   
>  _Will be_   
>  _Is_   
>  _How?_   
>  _This is neither the first_   
>  _Nor the only time that space has opened._   
>  _We are riddled with death_   
>  _Like a sieve._   
>  _The dark holes are as multitudinous_   
>  _As the stars in the galaxies,_   
>  _As open to the cold blasts of wind._   
>  _If we fell through_   
>  _What would we find?_   
>  _Show me_   
>  _Let me look through this new empty space_   
>  _To where_   
>  _The wind comes from_   
>  _And the light begins._
> 
> \- Madeleine L'Engle, Lines After M.B.'s Funeral
> 
> From _The Ordering of Love: The New & Collected Poems of Madeleine L'Engle_.

Rob finds her huddled by the loose mound of soil. Just the size of a casket, still, the grass having not yet been coerced to grow green and lush atop the grave.

He thinks that perhaps it ought to be Adam here, watching as she kneels upon the damp earth, fingers clutching a pencil as she scribbles furiously on a loose sheet of paper that’s balanced on her knee and waving gently in the breeze. Adam calms her as no one else does. Perhaps it should be Adam, watching Vicky illuminated in the moonlight. Watching Vicky, writing, crouched beside Grandfather’s grave.

Maybe he ought to leave her alone, despite the fact that Mother sent him to find her. Let her have a moment of peace and solitude, so rare during these heavy days on Seven Bay Island. But he accidentally bumps Elephant’s Child just so and the music begins to play, Brahms’s _Lullaby_ lilting softly through the night. Vicky’s head jerks, turns to look for the source of the sound. Her eyes meet his.

She looks so young in the moonlight. Not so much older than him. Not so much greater.

“Rob.” Her voice is a husky whisper, barely audible, as though she’s been crying. He doesn’t move. “Rob, do Mother and Daddy know you’re here?”

The cemetery is far from the old barn; of course they know. He doesn’t tell her that, just watches as the sheet of paper she’d been scribbling on flutters softly to the ground. She pins it down with the toe of her shoe, careful not to smudge the penciled lines. She tucks her pencil behind her ear.

“Rob,” she says again, soft but demanding, “do Mother and Daddy know you’re here?”

He nods now, watches her shoulders relax as she notes the motion.

“Good,” she breathes, beckoning him closer. The paper crackles in the breeze. He can smell the salt air coming off of the Atlantic as Vicky pulls him into her side, her eyes heavy upon the mound of earth.

“They sent me looking for you,” he says, eyeing the horizon. He doesn’t want to look at the grave, the grassless earth a black void in the dark, refusing to reflect the moonlight. It doesn’t feel like the sort of place that could possibly hold Grandfather.

“What do they want?” There’s a cold edge to Vicky’s voice as her eyes move from the ground, higher, to the constellations speckling the inky sky.

“Mother’s reading.”

Her tone lightens. “What’s on the roster for tonight?”

“I don’t know,” he says. John had suggested more Shakespeare; he liked the idea of that. But Mother had said: “Go find Vicky, we’ll let her choose.”

She plucks the sheet of paper from the ground and folds it into quarters, stuffing it into her pocket as she stands. She grasps his hand. “Something light, I hope.”

He pretends not to notice the tears glistening on her cheeks in the moonlight as they begin to walk. “Maybe.”

She squeezes his hand. “You’re being rather elusive tonight.”

“Not elusive,” he says, “contemplative.”

Vicky slows to navigate a rocky path and he lets her guide him through as though he’s far smaller than he is in actuality.

She must be thinking something along the same lines, because she drops his hand. “I forget, sometimes,” she says, “how much you’ve grown.”

“Not so much as you or John,” he points out. At some point he’d noticed that neither of them still possessed that awkward adolescent lankiness that both had maintained for some time. He’s not looking forward to that, whenever it may strike him.

A hollow chuckle, and then: “True. I feel ancient, some days.”

The mood is still like it was in the cemetery: shadowed but speckled with light. He looks up at her. “Are you all right?’

It catches her off-guard for a moment. “Of course I’m all right.” Her voice catches a little. “Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

“Bad things keep happening,” he states plainly. “You don’t have to be all right.”

Commander Rodney, Grandfather, Binnie, Ynid’s baby: all losses that Rob knows Vicky feels deeply. He thinks that not only does she not have to be all right, she probably shouldn’t be.

She stops. “I just needed to slip away for a moment.”

A question, a single word, rests on the tip of his tongue, so he lets it fly. “Why?”

Vicky quirks her head at him, curious and perhaps slightly offended – he can’t tell in the wavering moonlight. “That’s a strange question.”

He clutches Elephant’s Child to his chest with both hands now that she’s let go of him. He knows the answer to the question, he thinks, but she has a special knack for wording answers. Just like poetry.

“It’s all a bit much,” she says bluntly, “Grandfather – everything, really.” She pauses. “I just needed to slip away for a moment.”

He understands. He had wound the music box in Elephant’s Child as he walked down to the cemetery, letting the song carry him toward her. It was nice, the gently interrupted silence, but also haunting. Rob had been glad when he’d found Vicky by the grave.

“Did you write a poem?” He can see the dim lights of the old barn in the distance. It doesn’t feel right anymore, without Grandfather.

Vicky nods. “Yes.” She's silent for a long moment. “I wish I could show it to him.”

He looks up, the moon waxy and large against the blue-black sky. It makes him feel indescribably small, far smaller than his seven years. “I think he sees.”

“Do you really think so?”’

He watches the gentle moon. If he squints, he can see a picture not unlike Grandfather’s face in the bumps and lines and craters. It helps soften the dull ache that’s occupied his stomach in the days since he’s been gone. “I think so.”

She takes his hand again, and they walk toward home.

**Author's Note:**

> I was afraid for a long time of adding my words to the small but lovely pool of L'Engle fanfiction out there, but this idea came along and persuaded me to try. I can only hope I did her wonderful wonderful characters justice. They mean so much to me. 
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr](http://ofpencilandpen.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
